Hassan Rouhani, 64, will take office as President of Iran on August 3 with the endorsement of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who Saturday congratulated him as the winner of Friday’s election by 50.7 percent in the first round of voting. Rouhani garnered 18 million ballots out of the 72 percent turnout of 50 million eligible voters, with the help of “reformist’ sympathizers and minority communities. With the news,spontaneous celebrations spread across Iran. The president-elect told the people that his success was “a victory of moderation over extremism.”DEBKAfile attributes Rouhani’s upset victory to an unprecedented combination of circumstances:1. The hard-line camp couldn’t get its act together. Khamenei failed to persuade the Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) chiefs to withdraw their candidate, Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf’s, in favor of his favorite, National Security Adviser, Saeed Jalili. So the ayatollah turned to Rouhani.Although a solid member of the Islamic Revolutionary establishment, Rouhani looked capable of inspiring hope in the Iranian people, and using his mild personality to persuade the international community to relax some of the sanctions strangling the Iranian economy over Iran’s nuclear program.2. Outgoing president, Mahmoud Ahmaninejad took his revenge on the extremists who had ostracized him for nearly four years. Familiar as no one else with the tricks used by the regime to rig elections, he stood watch to make sure that this vote was clean.3. Khamenei and the clerics devoted enormous efforts to blocking the candidacy of Ahmadinejad’s crony, Esfandyar Rahim Mashee, and pragmatists like former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. They were so wrapped up in their factional struggles that they failed to notice Rouhani, the only clerical candidate, creeping up behind them. He stole the hearts of the Iranian street by promises they were longing to hear, to free political prisoners, guarantee civil rights, return "dignity to the nation,” address the dire state of the economy and embark on “constructive interaction with the world.”The infighting between Khamenei’s henchmen and the Guards was still going on early Saturday morning. Rouhani, concerned about a plot to falsify the election, turned up at the Interior Ministry and demanded an early tally of ballots and publication of first partial results.They were accordingly released at 6.45 a.m. local time, less than seven hours after the last polls closed - but only after the Guards general Mohammad Reza Naqi was told to leave the building.4. Khamenei tends to alternate hard-line presidents with less pugnacious successors, say DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources. Rouhani is generally portrayed hopefully by Western and Israeli media as a moderate. But when the supreme leader struck a quiet deal with him as successor to Ahmadinejad, he knew his record as a loyal product of Iran’s clerical elite who, a decade ago, served as Iran’s National Security Adviser, and is at one with the Islamic Republic’s missions and goals.At the same time, his style is conciliatory and sublte and he has gone out of his way to save Iran from confrontation with bigger and stronger opponents. For instance, as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator between 2003 and 2005, Rouani ordered the temporary suspension of uranium enrichment activities when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 so as not to give the Americans a pretext for attacking Iran as well.A readiness for a more flexible approach to Iran’s nuclear controversy with the West was hinted at by the supreme leader. In his message of congratulation to the new president Saturday night, Khamenei wrote: "I urge everyone to help the president-elect and his colleagues in the government, as he is the president of the whole nation.”Rouhani’s first task will be to draft a detailed plan marking out the boundaries of Iranian concessions for obtaining the partial lifting of sanctions to restore the flow of frozen oil revenues to the country’s empty coffers.This will entail the new president going head on head against the Revolutionary Guards on two scores. He must fight the powerful corps first over their refusal to consider nuclear concessions and, second, to start breaking up the Pasdaran’s vast monopolistic empire which, no less than international sanctions, stifles the country’s economic life.The Guards are already spoiling for this fight and may not wait for the new president to take office in August. Saturday night, shortly after Rouhani was proclaimed victor, rumors were flying around Tehran of a Revolutionary Guards military coup conspiracy to prevent him from taking office. Gen. Reza Naqi, who tried to interfere in the counting of ballots, was heard commenting two days before the vote: “Never mind who is elected, or how, we consider it our duty to get rid of any undesirable president.”President-elect Rouhani would do well to heed this remark. - Debka.com

Court records obtained by The New York Times show that Yahoo had fought back against the National Security Agency's broad requests for user data in 2008. The company, which provides email service to hundreds of millions of people, argued that the order violated Yahoo account holders' constitutional right against unreasonable searches and seizures. The secret court didn't buy Yahoo's argument, and compelled the company to give the NSA digitally stored email and photos at its beck and call. Since the bombshell revelation of NSA's so-called PRISM program last week, the public has learned more about how the nine participating Internet companies let the government collect broad swaths of personal information from Internet users for national security purposes. The secret 2008 decision seemed to put a dark cloud over Silicon Valley: cooperate with the government to fight terrorism abroad, or you'll find yourself in court. One firm that more successfully resisted the NSA's advances was Twitter. That's partially because the young microblogging service has less data on users compared to Google or Facebook, according to The Verge, so it's less desirable to government snoops. But that hasn't stopped the company and its top lawyer, Alex Macgillivray, from fighting the government in court when it has asked for people's private information. Though this case was previously known through a heavily redacted court order, it wasn't until now that we knew Yahoo was the company behind the unsuccessful NSA challenge that would leave many companies less willing to battle the NSA on other surveillance requests. In the decision, the court had told Yahoo that their worries were "overblown."

Yahoo, like Google and Facebook, have denied involvement in PRISM.

"Yahoo! has not joined any program in which we volunteer to share user data with the U.S. government," Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell wrote in a Tumblr post Saturday. "We do not voluntarily disclose user information. The only disclosures that occur are in response to specific demands." Moving past outright denial of participation, companies such as Twitter, Microsoft, Facebook and Google are now pressing the government for permission to publish more information about the number of secret requests it receives for customers' data.

n December of 2012, a handful of senators fought to fix the law that allows for PRISM, the NSA's vast Internet surveillance program that taps Google and Yahoo for communications. They failed. But now that they have your attention, they'd like to try again. In light of the public outrage about PRISM, eight senators have come up with a way to make public the secret courts that administer the program, which was reauthorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) less than two years ago. Under the guise of covertly gathering intelligence on the U.S.'s enemies, FISA courts operate and approve surveillance requests in secret. They've existed since FISA was passed into law in 1978, and most recently were renewed for five more years at the end of 2012. In light of PRISM, which was only revealed Thursday due to a press leak, those senators have created a bill to declassify Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinions. Many of the new bill's sponsors gave FISA its biggest recent challenge, fighting it before it passed the Senate on December 28, 2012. The seven democrats cosponsoring the bill each voted no (it passed 73-23); Mike Lee (R-Utah), who voted to extend FISA, is now angling to make it public.

McDonald's happy image and its golden arches aren't the gateway to bliss in Bolivia. This South American country isn't falling for the barrage of advertising and fast food cooking methods that so easily engulf countries like the United States. Bolivians simply don't trust food prepared in such little time. The quick and easy, mass production method of fast food actually turns Bolivians off altogether. Sixty percent of Bolivians are an indigenous population who generally don't find it worth their health or money to step foot in a McDonald's. Despite its economically friendly fast food prices, McDonald's couldn't coax enough of the indigenous population of Bolivia to eat their BigMacs, McNuggets or McRibs. One indigenous woman, Esther Choque, waiting for a bus to arrive outside a McDonald's restaurant, said, "The closest I ever came was one day when a rain shower fell and I climbed the steps to keep dry by the door. Then they came out and shooed me away. They said I was dirtying the place. Why would I care if McDonald's leaves ?" The eight remaining McDonald's fast food shops that stuck it out in the Bolivian city's of La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz de la Sierra, had reportedly operated on losses every year for a decade. The McDonald's franchise had been persistent over that time, flexing its franchise's deep pockets to continue business in Bolivia.

Any small business operating in the red for that long would have folded and left the area in less than half that time. Even as persistent as McDonald's was in gaining influence there, it couldn't continue operating in the red. After 14 years of presence in the country, their extensive network couldn't hold up the Bolivian chain. Store after store shut down as Boliviarejected the McDonald's fast food agenda. Soon enough, they kissed the last McDonald's goodbye.

The McDonald's impact and its departure from Bolivia was so lasting and important, that marketing managers immediately filmed a documentary called, "Why McDonalds's went broke in Bolivia."

Featuring, cooks, nutritionist, historians, and educators, this documentary breaks down the disgusting reality of how McDonald's food is prepared and why Bolivians reject the whole fast food philosophy of eating.

The rejection isn't necessarily based on the taste or the type of food McDonald's prepared. The rejection of the fast food system stemmed from Bolivian's mindset of how meals are to be properly prepared. Bolivians more so respect their bodies, valuing the quality of what goes into their stomach. The time it takes for fast food to be prepared throws up a warning flag in their minds. Where other cultures see no risk, eating McDonald's every week; Bolivians feel that it just isn't worth the health risk. Bolivians seek well prepared, local meals, and want to know that their food was prepared the right way.

Did you know that the McRib is processed with 70 different ingredients which include azodicarbonamide, a flour-bleaching agent often used in producing foamed plastics? McRib's are basically "restructured meat technology" containing a mixture of tripe, heart, and scalded stomach. Proteins are extracted from this muscle mixture and they bind the pork trimmings together so they can be molded in a factory. TheMcRib is really just a molded blob of restructured meat, advertised and sold like fresh ribs. There's nothing real about it, the preparation or the substance. In fact, McRibs really came about because of a chicken shortage. The restructured meat technology approach kept the McRib on the menu, despite the shortage, and the profits continued rolling in. This is the very disgusting idea that the Bolivians have rejected in their country.

The Bolivian rejection of McDonald's has set a proper example for the rest of the world to follow.

Phillip Marshall, a former airplane pilot and author whose works included the 2003 novel “Lakefront Airport,” - “False Flag 911: How Bush, Cheney and the Saudis Created the Post-911 World (08)” and “The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and the War on Terror,” a 2012 publication in which he theorized it wasn’t al-Qaida but U.S. and Saudi government officials who orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States, was found dead along with his two children in their Murphrys-area home in California. Reports indicate all 3 died of gunshot wounds. Friends of Marshall’s kids, Alex 17 and Macaila 14, discovered the gruesome scene after showing up to check on them on Saturday after not having heard from them for numerous days. The Calaveras County Sheriff’s Office reported that both children as well as the family dog were shot once in the head with a handgun. Marshall’s estranged wife and mother of the 2 kids was traveling abroad at the time of the shootings. A possible motive for the shootings has not been determined but police reports indicated evidence that it was a murder suicide.

The migration from desktop computing to the cloud is on every tech firm's playlist this season, with Apple [AAPL] expected to deliver improvements to its iCloud service later today -- but recent revelations regarding the US government's PRISM surveillance technology could be the kiss of death to these future tech promises. Think about it: In order for cloud computing solutions to be seen as viable alternatives to more traditional desktop solutions users -- personal and business users alike -- need to be 100 percent certain their data is secure. It is unlikely too many people want their privacy curtailed in exchange for convenience -- and reports claiming the US can pretty much tap into a user's personal data and information from any PRISM-enabled system installed in locations worldwide undermines expectation of secure data in the cloud. What is PRISM? Whistleblower, Edward Snowden, put it like this when he spoke with The Guardian this weekend (there's a video of him speaking below): "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards. "I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under." Competent cloud service provision US technology firms have attempted to deny the PRISM claims. One Apple spokesperson even claimed Apple "has never heard" of it. Google claims no knowledge of it. In fact, if you listen to the technologists, no one has any knowledge of the highly confidential surveillance tech. These denials are open to challenge. Take this deconstruction of Yahoo's denial written by security and privacy researcher, Christopher Soghoian. He observes that Yahoo: "Has not in fact denied receiving court orders under 50 USC 1881a (AKA FISA Section 702) for massive amounts of communications data." Yahoo's denial stresses the company has never volunteered to share this data with the spooks, adding: "We deeply value our users and their trust, and we work hard everyday to earn that trust and, more importantly, to preserve it." Despite Soghoian's poignant analysis, let's give Yahoo and the other big tech firms the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume their denials mean they knew nothing of PRISM. Surely that's OK? No. That's not OK. That's far, far worse. You see, if it's true the US government has been routinely monitoring communications ("for your protection") and the big tech firms were unaware of this, then it suggests intelligence services have managed to find a way to access such data without the big tech firms being aware of the transaction. If that is true then it suggests security flaws exist across all cloud service providers that can be exploited by anyone who knows where they can be found. This means that while the US has been exposed as accessing the data at this time, there's no great guarantee that other intelligence services and even powerful entities outside of government haven't also identified the same security gaps. Which means the presidential reassurances on the matter don't fill me with warm, cosy feelings -- particularly since I'm in the UK. Given even the big tech firms are unaware of these gaps, there's no way then of knowing that a user's data safe. In the event that the big tech firm's -- by their own admission -- were unaware of government monitoring of their services, then users are left in a position in which they now know their service providers cannot in sincerity guarantee their data is safe. That's less of a problem for US users, as the PRISM story does suggest their data is protected by some elements of the Constitution. However, international users are fair game, apparently. Given the sheer quantity of international data passing across various cloud services into servers based in the US, that's a big concern. It's not just a concern for blameless, guilt-free individuals who don't want governments, or anyone else, snooping through their information; it's also a huge concern for businesses that are increasingly storing confidential business data in the cloud. Given competition is international, many businesses should now be asking themselves if they can trust their cloud service provider, particularly if that provider happens to be Google, Amazon, Microsoft...

In addition, if Microsoft, Apple, Google and Yahoo were unaware surveillance was taking place, what hope is there for security from smaller cloud service providers? It is of course possible these firms were aware of PRISM, but have been required to deny it for reasons of "national security." Does that make it any better? Of course not: It means, once again, that international business have been subject to routine surveillance of their data with very little oversight.

If you have stomach problems or gastrointestinal problems, a new study led by Dr. Judy Carman may help explain why: pigs fed a diet of genetically engineered soy and corn showed a 267% increase in severe stomach inflammation compared to those fed non-GMO diets. In males, the difference was even more pronounced: a 400% increase. (For the record, most autistic children are males, and nearly all of them have severe intestinal inflammation.)

The study was conducted on 168 young pigs on an authentic farm environment and was carried out over a 23-week period by eight researchers across Australia and the USA. The lead researcher, Dr. Judy Carman, is from the Institute of Health and Environmental Research in Kensington Park, Australia. The study has now been published in the Journal of Organic Systems, a peer-reviewed science journal.

The study is the first to show what appears to be a direct connection between the ingestion of GMO animal feed and measurable damage to the stomachs of those animals. Tests also showed abnormally high uterine weights of animals fed the GMO diets, raising further questions about the possibility of GMOs causing reproductive organ damage.

Proponents of corporate-dominated GMO plant science quickly attacked the study, announcing that in their own minds, there is no such thing as any evidence linking GMOs to biological harm in any animals whatsoever. And they are determined to continue to believe that, even if it means selectively ignoring the increasingly profound and undeniable tidal wave of scientific studies that repeatedly show GMOs to be linked with severe organ damage, cancer tumors and premature death.

Lead author of the study Dr. Judy Carman stated, "We found these adverse effects when we fed the animals a mixture of crops containing three GM genes and the GM proteins that these genes produce. Yet no food regulator anywhere in the world requires a safety assessment for the possible toxic effects of mixtures. Our results provide clear evidence that regulators need to safety assess GM crops containing mixtures of GM genes, regardless of whether those genes occur in the one GM plant or in a mixture of GM plants eaten in the same meal, even if regulators have already assessed GM plants containing single GM genes in the mixture."

The following photo shows one of the pig intestines fed a non-GMO diet vs. a pig intestine fed a GMO diet. As you can see from the photo, the pig fed the GMO diet suffered severe inflammation of the stomach:

The study adds to the weight of scientific evidence from others studies which show that rats fed a diet of GMOs grow horrifying cancer tumors and suffer premature death.

A scientific study published last year concluded that eating genetically modified corn (GM corn) and consuming trace levels of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide was linked with rats developing shockingly large tumors, widespread organ damage, and premature death.

That study was also criticized by corporate GMO trolls who argued that scientists should not show pictures of rats with large cancer tumors caused by GMOs because the pictures scare consumers into being afraid of GMOs.

Here are some of the pictures they don't want you to see, taken right from the public announcement of the study:

That study also found that rats fed GM corn suffered severe kidney damage as well as shockingly high rates of premature death.

Why weren't these studies done before GMOs were unleashed into the global food supply?

The GMO biotech industry was able to escape any meaningful regulation of GMOs in the United States by (ridiculously) claiming GMOs were substantially no different from non-genetically engineered crops. "They're all the same!" we were told. And the USDA bought it.

So how did Monsanto patent its GM corn, then? You're not supposed to be able to patent something unless it's uniquely different. Thus, the very fact that Monsanto has acquired patents on its GMO crop varieties is proof that the company itself believes its seeds are different.

And what's different about Monsanto's GM corn? It produces a deadly insecticide grown right into every kernel. That insecticide, of course, is what kills insects that try to eat the crop. And how does it kill those insects? It fatally damages their digestive systems. That same insecticide stays inside the corn even as the crop is turned into animal feed... or corn chip snacks... or flaked corn breakfast cereal.

This pig stomach inflammation study suddenly provides yet more credible evidence that GMOs are unfit for human consumption and may be causing severe damage to the digestive systems of both humans and mammals.

Naturally, the GMO industry and all its paid online trolls, on-the-take "scientists" and multi-million dollar P.R. machine will try to viciously attack this study from every angle. They absolutely hate real science when that science calls into question their poisonous, deadly seeds and genetic pollution.

That's why you won't read this news anywhere in the mainstream media -- the same media that utterly discredited itself a few weeks ago when it pretended the hugely successful global March Against Monsanto never even took place.

NOTE TO THE SELLOUT CORPORATE MEDIA: You have zero credibility remaining. Virtually no one believes what you print. Everyone knows you have sold out your editorial agenda to Big Pharma, Monsanto, weapons manufacturers and the surveillance state. The reason why alternative media like GM Watch and Natural News is rising while your own numbers keep plummeting is because we print the real news that really matters on liberty, food freedom, farm freedom, health freedom and self-reliance. Maybe if you stopped intentionally lying to your readers on a daily basis while censoring important news on grassroots liberty, you might see some readers return to your publication... -DiscloseTV

WASHINGTON – The EU is demanding assurances that Europeans’ rights are not being infringed by massive, newly revealed US surveillance program. Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding plans to raise the concerns with US Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday. Last week a series of leaks by a former CIA worker led to claims the US had a vast surveillance network with much less oversight than previously thought. The US insists its snooping is legal under domestic law. The Obama administration is investigating whether the disclosures by former CIA worker Edward Snowden were a criminal offence. More revelations are promised to be released to the press in coming days about the extent of U.S. domestic spying. Mr. Snowden’s employer, defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, said on Tuesday it had fired the 29-year-old infrastructure analyst for violating its ethics code. Russia has offered Mr. Snowden political asylum in light of the recent revelations against the U.S. US officials say the snooping program known as Prism, revealed in last week’s leaks, is authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It gives the US National Security Agency (NSA) the power to obtain emails and phone records relating to non-US nationals. But details about the individuals targeted under the act remain secret, and there are concerns the NSA is overstepping its powers. Documents leaked to the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers claimed the US authorities had direct access to the servers of nine major US technology firms, including Apple, Facebook and Google. Mr. Snowden told the Guardian that individual operatives had the power to tap into anyone’s emails at any time. Although the firms have denied granting such access, saying they agreed only to legal requests, US officials have admitted Prism exists. And on Tuesday, Republican Senator Lindsay Graham said US surveillance of phone records allowed the government to monitor phone records for a pattern of calls, even if those numbers had no known connection to terrorism. One of the Guardian journalists who wrote the Prism stories, Glenn Greenwald, has promised “more significant revelations” to come. In the US, the controversy has focused on the possibility that conversations of US citizens may inadvertently be captured. But overseas, governments and activists point out that US law provides foreigners with no protection. The Liberation Daily in China has harsh words for President Obama: “Five years ago, Obama came to power waving an anti-George W Bush banner. Five years later, he is still exactly the same as George W Bush on invasion of privacy issues.” Russia’s Izvestiya compares the revelations to a dystopian novel: “The frightening reality of the 21st Century is that the world has become a house with glass walls, notions of ‘personal secrets’ and ‘confidential information’ are turning into fiction before our very eyes.” –BBC

COLORADO – Thick smoke plumes, visible for miles, billowed from fires near Colorado Springs, in southern Colorado, and in Rocky Mountain National Park to the north. A wildfire in a residential area northeast of Colorado Springs forced mandatory evacuations of 2,530 homes, including some worth more than $1 million, El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said. Video from a helicopter showed several large homes engulfed in flames. Maketa said about eight homes had burned but had no exact number because the fire was moving so quickly across parched forest. “Right now the firefighters are more focused on fighting fires, drawing lines. And law enforcement, to be very honest, is scrambling to get people out of there as well as do searches,” Maketa said. He said firefighters have shifted from evacuation mode to search and rescue mode. Three helicopters were battling the Black Forest Fire, he said. The area is not far from last summer’s devastating Waldo Canyon Fire that destroyed 346 homes and killed two. “It’s very, very reminiscent of what we experienced in Waldo Canyon,” Maketa said. All the Colorado wildfires were moving quickly, driven by hot, gusty winds and record-setting temperatures. The conditions were making it difficult to build containment lines around the fire, as sparks jumped across them. “Weather is not working with us right now, but our guys are giving it a heck of a shot,” Maketa said. There were no immediate reports of injuries in any of the fires. In southern Colorado, the Bureau of Land Management said three structures have been lost in a fire on about 300 acres near the Royal Gorge Bridge. Authorities evacuated Royal Gorge Bridge & Park. A third wildfire in southern Colorado erupted Tuesday in rural Huerfano County. The Klikus Fire had burned an estimated 45 to 50 acres west of La Veta, prompting evacuation orders to about 200 residences northeast of the fire. A fourth wildfire sparked by lightning Monday in Rocky Mountain National Park quickly grew to an estimated 300 to 400 acres Tuesday. No structures were threatened. -CSM

The US National Security Agency (NSA) snoops on all EU member states and on Germany the most, new data reveals. A color-coded map of secret surveillance activities by the NSA ranks countries according to how much they are surveilled – green for the least and red for the most watched. All EU member states have variant shades of green except for Germany, which is color-coded orange. The NSA tool, called Boundless Informant, is among the documents disclosed by 29-year-old Edward Snowden who has since sought refuge in Hong Kong. Snowden, who has worked at the NSA for the past four years on a number of outside contracts, said some NSA analysts have blanket power to spy on anyone for any reason. “I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authority to wire-tap anyone … even if you are not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded,” he told The Guardian newspaper. Boundless Informant reveals that some 3 billion pieces of metadata intelligence was gathered over a 30-day period, says The Guardian. Metadata includes calls made, location of the phone, time of the call and duration. The tool comes with an operational handbook and says it uses “big data technology to query SIGINT [signals intelligence] collection in the cloud to produce near real-time business intelligence describing the agency’s available SIGINT infrastructure and coverage.” It notes that the tool is “hosted entirely on corporate services” and is designed to, without any human intervention, to graphically display collected data in map view, bar chart, or simple table. The tool is able to create a “near real-time snapshot” of collection ability at any given moment. “The tool allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select the details about the collection against that country,” notes the handbook. Boundless Informant, along with the revelation of the secret-Prism programme and the extent of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act, has confirmed what a handful of EU privacy experts have long suspected. The amended FISA grants the US government powers to collect foreign intelligence on information stored in US Cloud computing providers like Google or Amazon. Caspar Bowden, a former chief privacy adviser to Microsoft, told this website in January that the amended FISA intentionally targets non-US persons who are engaged in any sort of activity that relates to the conduct of foreign affairs of the United States. But US justice department spokesperson Dan Boyd said his country’s data laws give high protection. “We believe the US standards are at least as strong as those governing intelligence collection in European Union Member States,” Boyd told EUobserver in an email in January. Boyd said the FISA Amendments Act is not used indiscriminately or for political purposes. He said the law has a judicial branch oversight through the so-called Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). “A careful and unbiased examination of US law demonstrates how strongly we carry out this commitment to protecting privacy,” said Boyd. Meanwhile, the FISC found the NSA activities unconstitutional in a 2011 opinion whose details have never been fully disclosed. The US justice department, in a rare public ruling on Friday (7 June), urged that the FISC opinion remain out of sight. –EU Observer

Netanela

A dedicated female servant to the Most High God of the Heavens and the Earth, the Heavenly Father of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob through his son Yahusha (Jesus Christ) who comes to share the Word of God in Love, Spirit and in Truth! I pray that the truth awakens many and that many souls are saved during this time of trial set in these last days before the return of our Saviour! Selah!